 /*******************************************************************************
  * Copyright (c) 2005, 2006 IBM Corporation and others.
  * All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
  * are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
  * which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
  * http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
  *
  * Contributors:
  * IBM Corporation - initial API and implementation
  *******************************************************************************/
 package org.eclipse.core.runtime;

 import org.eclipse.core.runtime.CoreException;

 /**
  * This interface allows extension providers to control how the instances provided to extension-points are being created
  * by referring to the factory instead of referring to a class. For example, the following extension to the preference page
  * extension-point uses a factory called <code>PreferencePageFactory</code>.
  * <code><pre>
  * <extension point="org.eclipse.ui.preferencePages">
  * <page name="..." class="org.eclipse.update.ui.PreferencePageFactory:org.eclipse.update.ui.preferences.MainPreferencePage">
  * </page>
  * </extension>
  * </pre>
  * </code>
  *
  * <p>
  * Effectively, factories give full control over the create executable extension process.
  * </p><p>
  * The factories are responsible for handling the case where the concrete instance implement {@link IExecutableExtension}.
  * </p><p>
  * Given that factories are instantiated as executable extensions, they must provide a 0-argument public constructor.
  * Like any other executable extension, they can configured by implementing {@link org.eclipse.core.runtime.IExecutableExtension} interface.
  * </p><p>
  * This interface can be used without OSGi running.
  * </p>
  * @see org.eclipse.core.runtime.IConfigurationElement
  */
 public interface IExecutableExtensionFactory {
     /**
      * Creates and returns a new instance.
      *
      * @exception CoreException if an instance of the executable extension
      * could not be created for any reason
      */
     Object create() throws CoreException;
 }

